


Lights I thru IV

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-04-15
Updated: 2001-04-15
Packaged: 2018-11-20 05:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11329839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Red lights on a puddle.





	Lights I thru IV

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Red Lights by J. C. Sun

Slashx: 5 July 1998  
ArchiveX: 13 July 1998  
Title: Red Lights  
Author: J. C. Sun  
Category: VAO   
Rating: R for profanity, questionably consensual m/m sex   
Summary: Red lights on a puddle.  
Thanks go to Cass for suggesting Mulder's fave junk food. Also, the blame for this little puppy is *all* Te's fault for writing such blazing M/K smut. . .  
For the anal and fanatical, this takes place in the same universe that 'Blue Lights' does. 

* * *

.red lights  
.jcsun

The night paints long, fluid black shadows striped with gray. Stripes of darkness and the varying shades thereof poured into the nooks and crannies, artistically draped across the sidewalk and snuggled into the corners. Then, a layer of crimson cellophane is thrown onto the scape by the virtue of a blinking red light at the local intersection; this is streaked through with the whiz of passing cars, lights turned bright bright and the bar signs spilling spectral shades all around, elongated and electrified flowers in blue and green.

Krycek blinks against the light, shading his eyes, lounging against the alley wall. No frivolous energy about him, tonight: a languid stroke of black lifted from the night's bucket and laid carefully against the rough wall. His foot scuffs the concrete once, a rasping noise, and his fingers lift a cigarette to his mouth every now and then, but lounging, none the less. He straightens up at the approach of Mulder, Mulder swinging into the crook between buildings, a land of humped puddles and rusting fire exits.

"Good morrow, stranger," murmurs Krycek crossing his arms and taking in the well-dressed form. A London Fog coat truly the color of London's fogs, and a starched white shirt ornamented with a grotesquely psychedelic acid trip reject purchased from Washington's best boutiques. Krycek poses a question in black leather jacket and worn jeans. "Well dressed for your venture into the slums." 

"You have a lot of *nerve*, you ratshit bastard," Mulder hisses by way of hello. "Calling me at the office, ever-so-fucking casual and asking Scully if I was there."

Krycek tilts his head. "That was her?" He sniffs. "Her voice's different on the phone. A lot pleasanter, for one thing."

Mulder's eyes narrow.

Krycek smiles, gently, enjoying Mulder's irritation.

"It's true. You've noticed too: that's why you're always talking on the phone to her. Always that little cell, never face to face."

Mulder snarls this time:

"Cut the bullshit, asshole. What does your master want from me this time?"

Krycek shrugs; he knocks a long tube from a box, which he then tucks back into his jacket. "Would you believe me if I said I just wanted to see you?"

"No."

A little flick of grin curling in Krycek's cheeks. "Then I won't say it."

Mulder snorts in disbelief and leans against the opposite wall: he regards Krycek over crossed arms. 

"What does he want me to do this time? Break into the mint? Track down abductees? Put my ass on the line for him?"

Krycek laughs. "They want me to check up on you. See how you're doing."

Mulder growls something to the ilk of 'like-they-care'. 

Again, a smile, cool, insouciant, a ripple of barely-liquid depths flicking slightly, and fingers stroking white paper. "You should sleep more--eat something besides that Sonic crap you get everynight. It's not good for the arteries, you know, not since you've given up your morning runs."

"Motherfucking *dick*head cunt--" 

A shrug, the quick spark, the dying away of a cigarette and grind of steel boot-nails against concrete. The glimmer of carnal green underneath shadows, a smile. "You talk about it a lot Mulder: you must want some badly."

A double-twinned heartbeat's paused murmur here, a paused murmur heavy laden with long sweaty memories of hot-on-hot-on-cold mouth. No wonder then that it's a heartbeat's long pause. 

"Are you offering?"

Shoulders shrug, same carnal green eyes flicking, pale mouth moues impartially.

"Are you asking?"

Ferocious growl. "No."

"Oh." Shoulders underneath leather; Mulder can make out the faintest ridges of muscle and bone underneath hiding black softened, oiled and stroked to supple easiness. 

A smile. "I was under the impression you were."

Mulder makes a quick, snarled obscenity coupled with explosive fists, leap lunge forward. A flurry of motion, then a grunt 

Soft, ever so soft, murmured on the edge of Mulder's ear, lips flicking faintly. "You want to play, puppy?" A tug against his throat, pressing close, Adam's apple in the crook of an elbow; Mulder can feel the long tight arch of Krycek's thighs over his back, the line of calves against hips. Softly, softly, into the ear, delicate puffs, freshly damp lips stroking upright hairs, soft, almost a lover's kiss, punctuated with a tug at the throat, the upwards tilt of Mulder's face. "You want to play, hunh, puppy?" Another tug, more strokes upon the ear, then a sudden dip, a sway of Krycek's hips, brushing groin against that curve of back where spine drops into ass, a region bearing only sweat-dampened transparent shirt. The touch of something solid, and Mulder's soft despairing moan as his face touched the bricks, burn running up his shoulder blades. "You do, don't you, puppy?" 

There's a thin sob, and as Krycek licks his lips, the pale pink bud catches the outer rim, dampens it and layers it with a covering of clear beads balancing on thin hairs. The thin sob solidifies and tightens into a high-pitched, truly canine whine; Mulder rocks back and forth, trying to smother the noises in concrete, hard, unyielding, stone but only ends up bloodying his lips against the grit.

There's a harsh tug at his throat: the elbow constricts and Mulder's air-tube constricts also. 

"No moving." 

There a whimper, a little toss of the head, but Mulder's arms droop to his sides, long, loose strands that Krycek gathers into steel cuffs, a little snick, a soft tug. Mulder's complaisance is rewarded by a quick swipe of rough thumb across his neck, index finger stroking into the pale flesh between Windsor knot and starched cotton, and the contact draws a cry, a wretched noise murmured into concrete. He allows his knees to be bent up, crooked, moved towards his belly even as they are spread apart; he allows himself to be folded into position. 

A probing finger creeps into the back pocket of his pants, something is extracted. It gleams in the light, and Krycek grins.

"Lube. And a condom."

Silence, then an agonized little flutter in the hollow of Mulder's throat

And when Krycek flicks long, elegant assassins' fingers over the brass buckle of Mulder's pants, Mulder holds still, remembering olden times: lust and fear and the slick slap of oiled flesh upon trembling flesh. He remembers that he has a gun, holstered, round in its chamber sitting by his hip; he can feel the heavy metal weight dangling there, but he doesn't move. His wrists hang limp in the manacles removed from his own belt, and his head arches up as his underwear is gently, carefully eased down over his ass, into the fold of his knees. There are easy, light fingers across the inside of his thighs, digging in at the very tops, and Mulder's head tosses up when he feels the finger slide in, and his hips wriggle slightly.

One.

One, two.

One, two, three.

Krycek moves his hips with an economy of motion: no flair, no extra whirl with the hips. One, two, three, a quick, parsimonious thrust, an austere withdrawal and another business-class thrust, with little gaps filled by the quick pants issuing forth from Mulder's bitten mouth. Hands on the gap between pelvis and waist, with the back beneath him arching in slow time. With a little jolt, Alex realizes that for each one of his inhales, Mulder exhales, and that back dips, and when he exhales, that back curves up and tight, pressing ridges into formerly starched cloth, straining up against the steel-bound wrists. 

And when Mulder's back flexes in two, there's a sharp cracking noise, and the back droops, held up only at the shoulders and the hips, by Krycek's cock. . . Then Mulder's crying, these short, soft little gasps that he bites into his lip; his shoulder shakes and Krycek runs his hands across, marveling at the feel of flesh under starched cotton. 

Quietly, Krycek pulls out, sighing and shivering underneath his own jacket; the night air has been unexpectedly cold, and he can feel his alveoli clawing at oxygen. Carefully, though, he pulls Mulder's pants back up and flicks the cuffs off Mulder and tucks them back onto the agent's belt, hooking them on the leather. A hand at Mulder's shoulder, pulling him upright, dusting off the knees of expensive trousers, which have chips of asphalt and dirt and weeds embedded in them. 

Mulder blinks then, this long befuddled glare and the dip forward of his shoulders as his bloody mouth whispers, sibilantly, over the sound of traffic, the tense shiver of a zipper.

"I hate you, Krycek. I fucking *hate* you." 

Krycek notes that there's something abstractly beautiful about Mulder's face underneath an alley light, all shades of half light, the long plane of his nose, architectural perfection in the curl of lip. It's the same sort of beauty as a Mandelbrot.

"So help me God, I am going to fucking mur--"

Krycek, he smiles, half amused. "Go home Mulder."

Mulder blinks, wavering.

Krycek, he repeats: "Go home and sleep." A pause as Krycek leans backwards against the brick wall. "You should be able to sleep now, Mulder: go home."

There might be a trembling, sad sort of voice then, weeping, almost, despairing and angry all at once. A little cry, as the figure staggers off towards the lights, and Krycek pushes it away with a half-contemptuous, half affectionate, a little sad gesture, then lights a cigarette in a flare of fire against cupped palm. The lighter makes a little snick, a fine old thing it is, the soft, preliminary puffs, Krycek's mouth pursing around the paper and tobacco, watching.

And then there is silence for a long time, at least in that alleyway, silence as Krycek watches the thin figure stagger out onto the pavement, outlined all in neon lights and streaking cars, hail a taxi and disappear into the long stream of traffic. And he stands there for a while, smoking and watching and letting the red light play across his face and his mouth and on the puddles. 

.end

Good? Bad? Wretched? Feed the beast the at 

 

* * *

 

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:43:11 EDT  
Subject: 'Dappled Light' (1/1) by J. C. Sun

Title: Dappled Light  
Author: J. C. Sun  
Category: VAR  
Rating: R for sexual themes, profanity  
Summary: Swimming pools and rusting banisters.   
Author's Notes:   
This is part of a loosely held series of vignettes exploring sexual/ near sexual relationships in the X-Files world. 'Blue Light' is about a potential S/Krycek relationship, while 'Dappled Light' is about MSR. 'Orange Light' is about a M/Skinner relationship, while 'Red Light' concerns M/Krycek. Each vignette is independent of the others, although reading the others will add resonancy. And yes, the similarities are completely intentional.   
The fanatical readers out there (all of whom I can count on a clenched fist) might be interested to know that chronologically, this has a possibility of being the backdrop for 'Subway'.   
Mush warning, people.

* * *

. dappled light  
. jc sun

With her, seduction is a very simple, very direct sort of thing: she plots them out, she plans them, of course--not to do that would be antiethical to her tidy nature; spontaneous thought is messy, unfinished and a difficult thing for her. But she favors the simplicity they hold, so her plots are easy, frequently wordless yet as quietly effective as the touch of her mouth across his.

It's a quick, sudden brush.

Her seductions are almost brazen. 

He shivers once, convulsing half-like in the chair and moans, shaking head from side. A panting gasp, as if the kiss had passed deeper, and then a motion as he clasps his hands together, rocks back and forth. It's a discreet sort of agony: they're in public, afterall, but he enjoys the sudden quick onset of this seduction. He's that sort of man, she knows now, to like the impulsive onset.

She didn't know four years ago, which is why that one failed. Why it fell smack down on its ugly face, with all of its carefully contrived atmosphere--the candles, the wine, Kenny G wailing away and the fire popping. She's learned something from Phoebe Green after all: when with Mulder, be bold, be daring, make like you've suddenly decided with a toss of your head to have him and that your bed isn't going to be cold tonight. And once embarked upon this course, you've got to look like you're sticking to it with devilish intensity as if your bridges are burning right behind you and you can feel their heat at your back, when all the while you're trying to figure out whether it's going to be in your room or his. 

But at any rate, she pulls his arm, turns Mulder and stands tiptoe to touch her mouth across his, this little feather stroke and tentatively, ever so quietly, he kisses her back.

.

The moonlight comes in blue and slender through the cracks in the curtain and it catches Scully's bare shoulders in long, thin horizontal bars broken by the bumps, the ridges of her vertebrae, the clasp of her bra. A Morse code of sorts, I-Ching even, whispering of secrets as she shrugs her shirt off. It shivers, trembling with meaning, but when Mulder tries to read it--run his fingers down the length, push his mouth against the inception-- she shies away and turns around, pressing against him with her mouth softly pricked. 

And she tilts her head, looking up at him for a moment, then scratches her fingers across his shoulder, nails catching at the scar tissue. His breath sucks in, but he holds his ground. She runs her tongue across the little puckerance--nothing more than a tiny protrusion, a ring of tissue, really--but still sensitive. Mulder watches as his shoulder disappears underneath a head of bobbing hair, then hisses as the flesh is pinched beneath sharp canines.

At the sound, Scully's face slides back up and she smiles softly, her fingers running down the edge of his hipbone, the rough lace of her bra pressing into his chest. "On the bed," she says, nuzzling his shoulder, so softly that first he doubts her intention, but then she pushes him down, and he stumbles back to sprawl across the bed, heels swinging, head half-hanging and the blood singing into his cranium. 

She has a very cool mouth: very collected, very firm, a damp spot travelling up his calf, on the inside of his thigh, smooth white flesh with the sharp, dark crease between leg and ass. Following that up until it broadens into the hollow of the pelvic bone, then a gentle hand across the top of the curling pubic hair. 

Her mouth is like diving into a swimming pool. Not flopping, not jumping, but diving, and all that it implies. From the irrevocable sound of the word to the line that your body makes when you dive, the clean slice of chilled water across your skin, and the way it tears away at extraneous matter--your hair, your limbs, your eyes, streamlining you and wrapping around, individual currents stroking, caressing, and the slow crawl of the coolness into your guts as you gaze up through a cloud of drifting hair.

Her vagina is also cool, also collected, the same enfolding manner; the implications of that particular bit sends his mind reeling, spinning out on the arms of a Catherine wheel, right before she snatches them all back and concentrates them in his cock. His heels drum against the floor as she wraps completely him in one long, smooth fluid motion, this flick of her torso that jams the breath out of his lungs. Vaguely, he realizes that he's clutching huge bunches of the bedsheet in his hands, but before he can consciously upon that thought, a long, frigid wave that completely subsumes him and smothering him. 

.

When he wakes the blue moonlight has been muted, dimmed and the orange of city lips pushes through the dreamy azure. Propping himself up on his elbows, Mulder reflects upon the curious experience having a heated body draped across you, the congruence of body parts. He runs a finger across her lips and grins a little when she rolls off him and onto a pillow.

Outside, on the balcony, the sea is a long strip of glitter sprinkled on the very edge of the horizon, and the boardwalk next to it is silent, still, deserted. Distantly, there is the sound of people, music and bottles and laughter, but it comes through distorted, faint; Mulder's fingers run underneath the banister, stroking the rusted metal, scraping a forefinger lightly across the jagged surfaces. He closes his eyes then tips back into a lawn chair and folds his arms into his lap, and then Mulder's head lolls backward in exhaustion. 

And then she touches his cheek, this long, drawing thing, and he turns his head and kisses her fingers: it's a slow courtly gesture, gentle, and she blinks in surprise. His smile is rueful and he nips a tiny little one up on the side of her jaw. 

"Run away with me." he says, settling her on his lap, letting her elbows fall on his chest and her legs around his hips.

She blinks. "To where?"

He shrugs into her body. "I dunno. Arizona. Mexico. The Bahamas--Bumblefuck, USA."

Tilting her head, she takes in the shape of his face in the moonlight, all long elegant sidles and she rubs the railing with the pad of her thumb, watching the paint come off in huge lead-saturated flakes. "Well, how're we going to afford living in these dens of inquity? It's not like we've got giant pensions due, and I'm just a lowly G-7." 

He grins. "I've got a nest egg of sorts, inherited from my father. It's not Solomon's hoard, mind you, but it'll be enough."

She quirks an eyebrow: "Enough to support the lifestyle in Acapulco? I doubt it Mulder--have you seen what an oceanside condo goes for down there?"

He frowns. "You want to live in Acapulco?" 

She gives him the faintest grin. "Sure. Sand, surf, sun, casinos. Dancing girls. What would you lack for?" 

"Try peace and tranquility."

"Why, Mulder--I never you pictured you as the domestic type." She jabbed an index finger at his sternum. "I thought that's why you joined the FBI instead of a highly lucrative private head-shrinking practice. Excitement! Shoot outs! Truth, justice and the American Way!" 

He shakes his head. "It was the health insurance." 

"Of course." She leans her forehead against his, looping her hands against the small of his neck. "What else?" Scully shoots her voice up a register or so to squeak out, "Daddy, Daddy! Tell us, tell us why'd you join the G-men?"

"Oh, so we're having children now?"

She gave him an evil glare. "Not yours. I want sperm donors: your flawed genetic makeup."

Mulder flicks a quick glance out towards the swimming pool, and doesn't dare turn around. "Of course."

Of course.

There's a pause, then, and she braces her palms flat on the bare skin of his chest, hair falling down on his pack; he can feel each discrete strand swaying in the slow breeze, the tendons, tight muscles of her thighs around his waist.

"Do you want to go swimming?" she says, soft and quiet, suddenlike.

"In the ocean?" he says.

Her mouth puckers; she shakes her head. "In the swimming pool."

"You sure?"

She nods firmly.

He blinks and catches the rushing of waves upon beach not so very far away, and it clenches the breath very tight inside him to see the dark, swirling color of her eyes.

.

The floor of the pool is one long rippling surface, bright white demarking the moving edges of the waves and darker shadow noting where the water lies silent. It is textured, trembling, rolling and when Mulder runs a finger across, half-expecting it to be smooth, in the manner of the pool itself, and is half-shocked when the rough bottom tears at his fingertips. 

The skin breaks and he blinks at the torn edges of flesh then kicks his way to the surface and lays it upon the side. His hair dribbles down in front of his face and Mulder yanks it out of the way with an impatient tug of his good left hand, and returns to his examination of his index finger. A small cut, really, but with a fleck of gravel, dirt, caught within. 

Scully brought her swimsuit and her skin rises out of the water in smooth, pale sheets, and she takes his finger from him in an authoritative motion and peering at it under the floodlamp. "Nothing much, you crybaby: look it's clotting already."

"Will you still kiss it and make it all better?" He bends down and touches her mouth and finds her flesh cold, clammy. Running a hand down her neck, across her shoulders, skipping over the band of her swimsuit. 

She tosses her head and laughs, "Alternative therapies aren't covered by your HMO, Mr. Mulder." 

"So I'm not your special patient anymore?" 

Rolling her eyes, Scully shoves off against the wall and shoots out into the middle of the pool. "Whatever made you think that you ever were?" There's trilling laughter that abruptly ends as she turns into the water and starts breaststroking a lap, her body a wavering mirage underneath the dappled lights.

And Mulder, he leans against the side and watches her and the dappled lights and then he rolls his head back and listens to the ocean, pounding ever so close away. 

.end

Comments to 

 

* * *

 

Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 17:32:09 EDT  
Subject: 'Blue Lights' (1/1) by J. C. Sun

Title: Blue Lights  
Author: J. C. Sun  
Category: VRAO  
Rating: R for sexual themes, profanity   
Spoilers: References to Tunguska/Terma  
Summary: Needs make for a weak woman.  
Previously posted to AXTC and XAPEN. Posted on XFF due to large number of inquiries as to where this could be found.

* * *

.blue lights  
.j c sun

Outside, it is rather cold. Wet. A wretched kind of weather for a wretched kind of day, a not-yet-wretched woman. Rain fell, and the wind blew, and now the aftermath of the weather speckles the street with pools of silver, bits that throw back the cheap neon lights on the front of darkness. 

A bard--they might have remarked that the sky had wept, that it had done it's grieving and now was the sad flatness afterwards.

The bar is illuminated by the street and the sickly bulbs of the bartender's and the bartender's cabinet. There is the hard tight press of bodies, pungent sweat, the lonely click of her heels on the hardwood floor, and the way her suit is hard, unyieldingly grey in the throes of red and blue and brown fluidity. A figure looks at her, taking in the small measure of shoulder and hip, fall of breast, upward curve of pantsuit on her crotch; she arranges her features in their least pleasing order, and lets some of that inner chill leach out onto her face. 

She finds him lodged way back, way back, in the closest semblance of a private booth that this place offers. Hunched over, dark, plastic limb resting heavy on the table, other hand fluidly stroking the stringent curves of a shot glass. She blinks to clear the smoke from her eyes and notes that he looks thin, very thin. He looks up and catches her with the little edges of green razor that are lodged within his eye sockets.

"You remembered." 

The 'this time' is implied, and it goes through her like the blunt tip of a smoldering poker, the flesh sizzling back and peeling away.

He's got a funny voice really: very smooth, very rich, with edges dribbling off into sandy burlap, acrid smoke. Very rough, like a bit of cloth that's had little bits of quartz included with the silk and the canvas, mahogany table with shards of glass jutting out, unpleasant to the touch, stabbing with unnecessary harshness and insinuating itself between your liver and your kidney, your heart and the bottom of your belly. It didn't use to be like this, she remembers, with a guilty stab--much lighter, more melodious. It used to wrap around your ear like honey on silk, down the throat to warm your belly instead of abrading it into bloody shreds. 

She blinks, pulling her consciousness in.

"What do you mean, this time?"

He laughs, but the sound is lost in the crowd, lingering only in the curves of his eyes and the sourness of her mouth.

. . . .

"You've got guts," she says, finally. "Calling me at work."

He shrugs. "It's not like you gave me your home phone number."

She winces. 

His mental i-guess-you-don't-do-that-for-one-night fucks beats in the air and she tries to push it away with her hand.

She composes her thoughts.

"If they put a voice ID on the receptionist's desk. . ."

He smirks.

"Not everybody's as paranoid as you are." And he pauses, to allow the words to dig in to her skin; to her, they are bee stings rambling down the back of her palms and the insides of her thighs. He regards her discomfort for a good long while, then fires forth:

"So, I hear Mulder's gone."

She doesn't answer and lets his bitterness, barely disguised, smack into the scarred table.

"I guess he must get tired of my bed every once in a while."

Her bluntness shocks him: crude, candid. His eyes go wide and he cannot speak for a long time, until he realizes the edge in those words, the serrated edge.

And she gives him a tight bitter smile.

. . . . .

"Skinner," she says, finally. 

"Skinner." He reflects the word back at her.

"He's dead."

"Oh?" The words are a neat, quiet little thing that bounce off the walls of the

"They. . . they found him in his apartment. Garroted. Hands bound up, gag in his mouth, like it was some kind of bondage game."

He blinks.

"Whatever makes you think it was a game?"

She shivers once, and barely prevents her hands from flicking in the sign of the father, the son and the ever-so-holy Ghost.

He shivers once too, and involuntarily passes his fingers over disappeared wrists, expecting flesh and rope, experiencing only space, as his eyes dribble off into blankness.

. . .

Blue neon, starting out with thin, rigid bars of cerulean before a quick flick of his shoulders deliquesces them into ink sculpting languorous cuneiforms across his skin, which dance down the edge of his spine and stroke in the hinterlands of his back. Carefully, she runs her hand across his skin, attempting to read the Nornic script across his back; her fingers stroke, then bite in frustration, as he shifts, and the liquid marks are gone, replaced by a flat plane of bluish illumination.

He grunts.

She sighs with something like equanimity: this is simply the latest in a long, long line of disappointments.

His missing arm--you don't really notice it. It's more like an empty space, a darker region, a place the blue lights don't kiss. When she touches it, he hisses with an the sound of breath sucked through teeth, and his body tenses, tight; when she applies her mouth, he moans, soft. Underneath her tongue, the scarred tissue is smooth, slick, lacking in texture: a slip of plastic plated over real flesh, without warmth, a thick layer of inorganic substance that is welded to the real stuff. Lightly probing, she seeks the joint, and finds a small protrusion, a puckered edge, and she picks at this with the edge of her teeth. 

Which is a stupid sort of thing, considering the reaction: in a swift, knee-jerk explosion his elbow jabs up into her gut and her inner organs get jammed together. She's slammed back down on the mattress, and his hand yanks her head backwards, exposing the long line of her throat to the scimitar of the blue light. Her eyes blink up at him quiet, rather surprised, and then he relaxes, smiling a little at her faux pas.

She shrugs a little and settles his weight onto her, then slides her knees to his sides in a quiet, blatant invitation. And he rolls back onto his haunches and traces the crease under her thigh, running upwards before slipping to touch her vulva, once. She chokes, once: the feel of calluses, hard, surprisingly rough; she thinks she can distinguish each tiny ridge on his thumb caressing. 

She's always considered it one of her many defects that she's never been able to say to herself 'he's stroking my clit' or 'he's touching the labia' or any other such thing. Down there, everything is one giant mass of flesh, tender nerve endings that she doesn't use very often, and pleasure, sensation, it takes the shape of a vaguely formless *thing* that crackles up her spine and makes her head sigh. He's doing something between her legs and it involves his fingers and it feels pretty good, but that's all she can figure out. 

Until he slides a long, thin finger into her and she convulses upward. The top join runs on the sides, lightly stroking, and she makes a sound halfway between a whimper and a profanity. She squirms up, down, all around him, but when he actually puts it in, she calms down. When he starts moving, she just smiles softly and runs a little hand down his chest. 

And when she comes, when the world runs into a long streak of crackling magnesium lights, she permits herself to cry Mulder's name out once, once into Krycek's obligingly muffling hand.

. . . .

It is a hoary, over-used cliche that when villains sleep, they are innocent, that the evil is leached from them, that they resemble choirboys.

Occasionally, however, it *is* true.

It's just that he's painted in all the wrong colors: everything twisted dark, shifted a gradient the wrong way and corrupting what should have been angel-fine blondeness into a prickly, sweaty dark mass clipped brutally short. Eyebrows have been imprinted with the same harshness, and the cheeks dip in a little too much. The shape of the lips is retained--delicately made, sweet--but a little too pale, for the edges blend into his skin, which, incidentally, is too opaque. The beige and sand tones reduce the translucence, and hence, the veins only push vaguely out from the skin; they are visible only at vulnerable junctures. She can't see the eyes right now, but the eyelashes seem right: dark, incredibly thick and full, but the wrong shade entirely, because combined with the shadows, he looks like both of his eyes have been thoroughly blacked. Slashing downward even as they curl, entirely too hard.

Gently, she runs her hand down the flesh, experiencing the peculiarly cool quality of a man's body while he sleeps; all the blood, it moves to some inner core, leaving the fringes cold, lifeless, the assurance of life prompted only by the pulse of blue veins underneath slack skin. 

He whimpers suddenly, a low frightened sound that echoes around the stilled room; a shiver, a trembling reflex, which is smoothly stilled by the stroke of her hand across his neck. A long, shuddering breath as her hand hovers over the creases between neck and shoulder, exhalation, the forceful stilling of limbs. Vaguely, she can feel a series of stripes running down his back, in neatly laid horizontal lines--long healed over, but still visible, touchable as thin welts; she controls a sudden urge to lay her face down against these hidden hurts and weep.

Instead, she busies herself with arranging his clothing neatly across the armchair, tucking his billfold into the pocket, sliding the holster underneath the pants, checking to make sure that the safety is on. For a moment, she considers leaving her home phone number on the pad beside the phone, but decides otherwise, to protect the perfect symmetry of this moment, the correspondence to another liaison eight years ago--she'll just leave, locking the door quietly behind her and making sure that the room is paid for.

. . . .

Mulder, he comes back to her on a Wednesday night, when the moon is full and comes down through the Venetian blinds in long blue strips. He's sitting in her armchair, hands tucked underneath him and staring at her like he's going to kill her. He probably is, she thinks, dispassionately hanging her purse up on the rack by the door. She should probably shoot him, but, instead, she shucks off her trenchcoat and hangs that up too, all the while waiting for him to say something. She goes and pulls off her shoes and is in the proccess of taking off her suit jacket when his words grate through the air.

"You slept with him."

The words startle her a little, and she blinks once, before she regains her composure and quips that her vibrator ran out of batteries. It's a line he used on her once, describing how he didn't want to have sex that night, and he remembers too: he winces. 

She shrugs, like it was the little matter that it was. "Where've you been?"

"Here. There. Chasing that ratfuck son of a bitch." Mulder glares at her. He pauses, then moves his arm with an awkwardness that makes her think that he's been hurt.

She blinks, and goes up to him, going down on her knees and her hands going up his shirt, flicking the buttons aside to disclose a bloody slash crusted over.

"How'd you get this?" she asks, running her fingers easy over the skin.

His shoulders hunch up, and she has a fairly strong suspicion that he's about to cry. And when he does, she's there, pillowing his head in her lap and softly running her hand stripes of light on his back, reading them. 

.end

 

* * *

 

ArchiveX: 30 July 1998  
Title: Orange Light  
Author: J. C. Sun  
Category:VRAO  
Rating: R for profanity, sexual themes  
Summary: Park benches, streetlamps and the wonder of Mulder.  
Author's Notes:  
For the fanatical, this story is part of the 'Lights' series exploring sexuality and relationships within the X-Files. 'Blue Lights' explores a possible Scully/Krycek affair, while 'Red Lights' is on a M/Krycek meeting. 'Dappled Light' is about MSR, while 'Orange Light' may be regarded as a M/Skinner relationship. The fanatical might note that 'Orange Light' might be seen as a possible chronological fallout to the relationship portrayed in 'Dappled Light'  
This story is entirely Kass's fault; my most abject thanks to 'the hack'.

* * *

.orange light  
.jcsun

The street lamp casts an oval of light: a brilliant orange ellipse that is as solid as the park bench, the trees, the heavy breathing of Mulder over the lapping noises of the man-made lake. Blinking his eyes against the glare, Skinner picks out the irregular profile cast into the light, and for the softest heartbeat of a moment, he fantasizes about reaching out and stroking that curved back, inside that thigh. And the quality of the vision, the casting of the illusion would lend itself easy to the sensation of cloth and muscle underneath his hand, but then Mulder has the temerity to move his shoulders, to shift from the abstract to the real and settle his elbows on his knees.

"So," Mulder says, casting a shapeless face with only the eyes and the lips (o those lips) brought out by dint of their wetness. "So, are you in the regularly habit of rescuing your agents from those dens of iniquity into which they've fallen?"

Skinner flicks a shrug that couples with a sardonic smile to take the ache out of his eyes. "Only when they call me from the bar phone and beg for me to rescue them."

Mulder's laughter is rich, rather uncertain rolling out across the darkness. "Ah, well. That was the vodka speaking, not me." And he looks away with a painful suddenness, that forces the other man to wrench out:

"Did you love her very much?"

It jolts Mulder out of the entrancing study of the gravel under his feet. "Love who?"

A pause, while Skinner collects his nerve. "Scully."

Mulder shrugs, clasps in hands in a fluid flow of languid despair. "I loved her a little, I think. Not enough to keep her, though."

Cough. "I can't believe that she'd let a spoiled. . . a spoiled affair influence your capabilities as an investigative team--she's much too professional." 

"What the fuck makes you think it'd ruin our working relationship?" The smile is tight, rather bitter, and Skinner can pick out the glinting teeth. "She's professional, my darling, if nothing else." A choked gasp. "Professional. Absolutely fucking professional."

It doesn't take a sifter to pick out the grains of latent hatred.

"I. . ." He knows should say something: something, something brilliant and soothing and witty and utterly apropos. "I. . ."

Mulder's head comes up in a sudden sharp arch of his back. "If you really want to know what happened, it wasn't like the breakup was entirely one-sided. We'd been having a lot of fights, lots of bullshit, arguing over the pettiest crap and things got entirely too nasty towards the end and everything was going to hell: it was mutual consensus more than anything." Pause. " But you have my promise, sir, that this won't influence our work: we're both mature enough to realize that the X-Files is more important than. . ." Pause. "Than this." A grin. 

A harrumph.

Quietly, firmly, Mulder adds: "It was never about love, not really. She didn't want my love, and I didn't have that much to give anyway."

Skinner blinks. "So why are you so. . .so. . ." 

"So torn up about it?" Mulder grins again, all sharp and pixieish. "Because I get tired of my bed being cold."

And the invitation, the promise is so brazen, so hurting and hurt that Skinner sucks his breath in and cannot speak for the longest moment. 

*

Mulder's apartment is stiff and grey. He had to fumble for the key, his fingers scrabble for the light switch. Skinner sniffs when he catches the smell of long-lived dust, and he watches the figure stumble around the darkened apartment. When the lights finally do come on, they find Mulder standing stock still smack in the center, regarding the landscapes around with something a befuddled wonderment; catching Skinner's muddlement, Mulder flicks a sad little smile in that direction.

"It's been a long time: Scully's apartment was bigger and it was closer to the office." A pause, as Mulder drops his coat on the table. "And there's a cot in the office, and it's always been a little fantasy of mine, to see what the Bureau is like at three AM. You could live there, really, what with the cafeteria, mailroom in the basement, and go jogging in the hallways, cross train on the steps. Down the E-hall, around the cafeteria and back up the stairs is a mile, y'know that?"

"No." 

Immediately, Skinner regrets the edge in his voice, but, luckily, Mulder is up and bouncing and away. Nothing's going to pull him down: he's pouring liquid into glasses.

"A drink?" 

Skinner shakes his head. "How many have you *had*, tonight?"

Mulder smiles. "One. One before you came."

Skinner wriggles: it's uncomfortable, like, knowledge that somebody has to indulge before they can get the guts up to talk to you. 

The glass clinks down in front of him anyway, and Skinner looks up in time to catch an eye of Mulder's shirt, immaculately white, the flesh dark and shadowy underneath. Allowing his face to fall back upwards, he blinks into the deliquesced shade of Mulder's eyes and something thuds hollowly in his throat when Mulder's mouth curls up and Skinner realizes that those lime green eyes are resting upon him. 

*

You never really remember life in crystal clear, perfect, step by step detail. It comes back to you in splotches, bits and pieces because for so much of it, you've got your eyes squinched tightly shut. So there is the feel of wind on your cheek and the protesting creak of a door, or the 

And as for photographic memories. 

Well.

There's a documented case of a Soviet with a photographic memory, a man who'd compiled so many images and pictures that he could no longer tell the past from the present, the storybooks to reality, and hence, they'd locked him up in a psychiatric ward. 

So Mulder can be excused for looking across the couch and seeing for one burning moment the her skin, pale white and ivory over the edge of her mourner's suit, hair curving to a crescent point, the sharp edge of her chin and those hard blue eyes staring back at him with such longing that this high pitched whine fills his ears.

And, so then when the picture fades to Skinner, watching him with prosaic liquid eyes, Mulder can also be excused for letting out a thin little sob and tossing his head with a despairing shiver of the shoulders. He can be excused for leaning forward and kissing Skinner as a languid extension of that shiver.

Skinner can find no excuse though for kissing Mulder back, for running his teeth against the taut line of Mulder's throat and for his thumbs to stroke Mulder's nipples through the shirt. 

There's a period of silence then, an awkward pause while Mulder's head lolls back and he takes in the colors of the ceiling. 

"I. . ." The word comes out part sob, part whimper and part lust. Mulder runs a hand across Skinner's shoulders, down the back to the ridge of hip, blinks up at him and tilts his head. Skinner, for his part blinks and then a slow, understanding half-smile twists his lips. Mulder tilts his head back upright, then quietly pulls his legs apart and opens his mouth, allowing him entrance.


End file.
